Breaking Josephine (26 page)

“Yeah,” I said. “Her
parents owned a restaurant here. But my grandparents died and it closed before
I was born.”

“Sorry, Jo, I
can’t come up with anything, then. You really should talk to Dex about all of
this, not me. He’s the expert.”

I sighed. I knew
she was right again, but I wasn’t ready to see Dex yet. I needed more
information and more answers to my questions before I saw him. Every time I
thought about Dex I felt that spark between us and a longing to touch him, to
be near him. I didn’t want to feel that spark and be drawn back into his life
if I couldn’t get over my mother’s death and his father’s involvement in it.

Macy dropped me
off at home and I gave her a huge hug, thanking her for the spa day and the
much needed conversation.

“Oh, Macy, wait!”
I said as she started to pull away. She stopped and I motioned for her to wait
while I ran around to my apartment. I grabbed the calla lilies, and brought
them back to her car. “Here,” I said, shoving them through the window. “Like I
said, either you take them or I throw them away.”

Macy rolled her
eyes. “Seriously Jo, you need to lighten up! Call me if you need me, okay? I’ll
be in L.A. until Monday, but I’ve always got my cell.”

“I will, thanks
Macy.” I watched her drive away and waived goodbye. Then I walked back to my
apartment, thinking about a new trip to Portland and Central Library.

I
arrived at the bus station early Friday morning and paid for a round trip
ticket to Portland. Having basically abandoned my job at the Red Barn for the
past week at Sam’s request, I couldn’t bring myself to ask Sam to borrow his
car again and take even more from him than I already had. I climbed aboard the
local bus and curled up in a window seat to sleep the hour and a half ride to
Portland. As the bus pulled up to the downtown Portland depot, I rubbed my eyes
and grabbed my bag. I stepped of the bus, got my bearings, and walked the four
blocks to Central Library just as the staff were unlocking the doors. I had
until 5:00 p.m. when the evening bus left for Cannon Beach to research Hartley
Industries and find out what might have happened with Declan Hartley, Sr., and
my mother.

I entered the
library and made my way to the public computers, finding one off to itself in
the corner of the room. I logged on and began searching for information on
Hartley Industries and its activities in the late 80s and early 90s. I searched
for hours without a break but came up with nothing earth-shattering. It
appeared the Hartley family had been acquiring timberland since they settled in
Oregon over a hundred years ago and had steadily built a fortune from timber
harvesting and selling to huge companies like Georgia Pacific and International
Paper. All those paper products and building supplies had to come from
somewhere, and many of them came from land owned by the Hartleys and Hartley
Industries.

When Declan
married Evangeline, Hartley Industries acquired Evangeline’s railroad
interests, and the family’s wealth surged. But according to my research, that
happened in the early 80s, years before I was born and years before my mother
changed her name and disappeared. Hartley Industries had also diversified in
the late 90s, but that was well after I was born, and irrelevant to my mother. I
had to be missing something, some key that would open up this mystery, but I
was out of ideas. My stomach rumbled and I recognized I had been sitting at the
same computer for hours, with nothing to eat.

I logged off and
walked outside, momentarily blinded by the glare from the clouded sun. I looked
around, noticing the tall office buildings and business people dressed in
important-looking suits walking between them decisively and with purpose.
Eventually, I spotted a diner across the street and walked in to grab a
sandwich. The diner had a retro feel, with metal wrapped counters and red vinyl
swivel stools bolted to the floor. Most of the booths were occupied with people
on working lunches and I felt conspicuous in worn jeans and a faded
long-sleeved t-shirt. I took my messenger bag off and found a single stool
close to the kitchen where I didn’t feel as awkward and out of place. I ordered
a sandwich and a bag of chips and watched the cooks in the kitchen, busy
preparing sandwiches and salads and hot plates for their hungry customers. Above
the opening to the kitchen, movie posters from the 50s and 60s lined the wall,
advertising Marilyn Monroe, Steve McQueen, and a host of other stars.

My sandwich came
and I took a bite, my teeth sinking into the soft bread and crunching through
the fresh lettuce. I ate quietly, thinking over everything I knew about Dex,
the Hartleys, and my mother. If I couldn’t find a connection to my mother by
searching for Hartley Industries, there must be something or someone else
connected to both my mother and Declan Hartley I had yet to discover. I thought
back to what Dex had told me the night I left him. He’d said his father
regretted “putting business first” years ago when my mother still lived in
Cannon Beach. If that was the case, it must have been related to timberland
somehow, since that was all Hartley Industries really invested in back then. I
looked up at a picture of Marilyn Monroe in Diamonds are A Girl’s Best Friend,
smiling in a pink satin dress, diamonds dripping out of her gloved hand, and set
the last piece of my sandwich down and stared.

What was it Macy
had said about the Blackstones and their reason for living in Los Angeles? I
tried to think back and remember. Their father had sold his family’s real
estate so he could start his movie production company in Southern California. She
didn’t say the family owned timberland, but what else is there on the Oregon
coast that makes you a ton of money and you can sell easily, other than uncut
forest?

I quickly paid my
bill and raced back across the street to research the Blackstones and their
possible connection to Hartley Industries. I realized I didn’t even know the
elder Blackstone’s first name, so I logged onto a public computer and just
searched for Blackstone and movie producer. After sifting through a few
irrelevant hits, I found him: Henry Blackstone. According to his bio, he grew
up in Portland and went to college at the University of Southern California,
majoring in film. It was there he met his wife, another student in film class,
and the two married just after college, having two sons, William and Colin. Since
then, he’d been engaged in a moderately successful movie production career,
owning a small movie studio in Los Angeles. The bio jogged my memory of what
Colin had said at the social, and it all sounded familiar.

I frowned, and
looked at the computer screen. Nothing from Henry Blackstone’s biography seemed
in any way connected to my mom or to the Hartleys. And it didn’t seem like his
business had been successful enough to earn his widow a colossal beach house in
Cannon Beach and earn his kids trust funds that set them up for life. I sat
back in my chair and thought over what I knew: Henry Blackstone sold the
family’s real estate to launch his film career, but nothing I’d found made any
mention of it.

I searched for
Blackstone real estate and Oregon, but came up empty. Frustrated, I was about
to give up when I remembered The Daily Astorian. If the Blackstones summered
out in Cannon Beach around the time I was born, they must have been in the
local paper. I pulled up the library intranet and the Astorian archives and
searched for Henry Blackstone. I found mentions of his movies over the years, a
blurb on William’s water polo career, and finally an obituary dated a little
over two years ago. According to the obituary, the Blackstones had been one of
the founding families of Cannon Beach, building one of the first beach mansions
in the area. Henry inherited the family’s business while still in college due
to his father’s early-onset Alzheimer’s. However, the obituary said, Henry was
not content to live in the Pacific Northwest, and he sold all of the family’s
real estate holdings, most of which were huge tracts of undeveloped, old growth
forest, to Hartley Industries in a massive sale in the summer of 1990.

I read the words
on the screen over and over: a massive sale of undeveloped forest to Hartley
Industries, Declan’s company, the same summer I was born. This had to be the
“business” Dex’s father referenced when he explained to Dex why he needed to
help my mother the weekend she died. But it made no sense. Why would a real
estate deal mean anything to my mom? Why would she be a roadblock to a deal
between Henry Blackstone and Declan Hartley?

I searched for
Henry Blackstone and my mom, using every name I could think of: Becca Kincaid,
Rebecca Kincaid, and Rebecca Sinclair. I found nothing, not a single connection
between them. Maybe I was crazy, and all of these secrets and lies were making
me lose my mind. But my instincts told me I was on the right track, and that I
had somehow stumbled on the key to unraveling all of my mom’s secrets. I spent
the next hour searching through the Astorian, trying to find some mention of
Henry Blackstone that would connect him to my mother, but found nothing. I left
the library with just enough time to catch the bus back to Cannon Beach.

After handing the
driver my ticket, I climbed aboard the bus, found an empty window seat and
curled up, tucking my feet beneath me and pulling my long sleeves over my
fingers. Somehow my mother, Henry Blackstone, and Declan Hartley were all
connected. And that connection caused my mother to leave her home, change her
name, and hide her true identity from everyone, including her only daughter. I
closed my eyes and exhaled, long and slow. The only person who could help me
put the missing pieces in place was Dex. He had access to his father’s old
records and he could tell me for sure if the timber deal between Henry
Blackstone and his father really was as big of a deal as it seemed from the
Astorian.

I knew seeing Dex
would be difficult. I walked out on him and left him alone in Hartley Manor
exactly a week ago and had refused to speak to him since then. But I needed
him. And even if we didn’t end up back together, and even if seeing him
shattered what was left of my heart, I needed to find out why my mother disappeared
and what she was doing when she died.

I woke up early
Saturday morning, showered, and cleaned my entire apartment, thinking about Dex
and what I needed to know. By mid-day my apartment sparkled, and I couldn’t
think of anything else to clean, wash, fold, or put away. I’d run out of ways
to procrastinate and I’d spent all morning thinking through what I would say to
Dex when I saw him, how I would react if he tried to apologize, if he begged me
to come back. I decided I would be as neutral as possible, and would be polite
but firm. I made a point of telling myself I wouldn’t kiss him, no matter how
tempting it seemed, and I wouldn’t let him talk his way back into my life. At
least not yet. I dressed in my running clothes—black workout capris, sports
bra, and black hooded shirt—and pulled my now blonde hair up into a spiky
half-ponytail high on my head. My new hair still threw me every time I looked
in the mirror, and not having long hair seemed alien and strange. I pulled on
my running shoes, grabbed my bag, and headed out, walking towards the beach and
Hartley Manor.

I arrived late
afternoon, just as the sun started to fade behind the mansion. I stood across
the street for a few minutes, gathering the courage to ring the doorbell. After
a few minutes, I took a deep breath, walked across the street and up the
driveway to the front door, ringing the bell and hearing it echo throughout the
house. No one answered so I rang again, but still nothing. Growing impatient, I
started to knock, unexpectedly pushing in the large wood door slightly with my
knuckles. Pushing harder, I discovered the door wasn’t locked or even latched. I
pushed it open enough to stick my head in and looked inside. The lights on the
first floor were off, and the place seemed deserted.

“Dex?” I called. “Dex
are you here? It’s Jo. Dex?”

I heard nothing
except my own breathing. I walked inside, shutting the door behind me until it
clicked. I walked quietly through the marble entryway, peeking into the kitchen
and living room. I saw no signs of life, no lights on, no food or drinks
sitting on the counter. Hartley Manor looked empty and vacant. I stood at the
edge of the stairs, unsure what to do. I needed to find answers but Dex’s
absence and his unlocked front door worried me. Had he left and reverted back
to his old self, partying in New York or Los Angeles?

Frustrated, I
started towards the front door when I paused and looked back at the stairs.
Initially when I decided to come to Hartley Manor, I was willing to break in.
Now that I had just walked in the front door thanks to Dex’s lack of attention,
I needed to stay and see what I could find. Thinking over what Dex had said
about his father’s files, I headed toward the stairs and the study. If I could
find the files and discover something he hadn’t, I could figure this out on my
own. I’d done pretty well so far without him; maybe I didn’t need Dex after
all.

I climbed the
stairs slowly and quietly, listening for any signs of life. The second floor
seemed as deserted as the first. I paused on the landing, remembering the two
of us, our bodies crushed against each other in that very spot up against the
wall. That was the night I realized I wanted to be with him, needed to be with
him more than anything. At the time it felt right—it felt perfect—and
I wanted nothing else. I closed my eyes, trying to rid myself of the memory. I
turned the corner and climbed the next stair to the top floor and made my way
down the dark hallway to the study. I pushed the door open, the afternoon light
coming through the sheer curtains and lighting the room with a warm glow. As my
eyes adjusted to the light, I saw a figure draped over the desk.